Hermione Granger: The Greatest Witch
by x Hemlock x
Summary: In the heat of battle, when all hope seems lost, Hermione has the opportunity to alter the outcome of the war, and through it, the fate of the wizarding world.


**Hermione Granger:**

**The Greatest Witch**

It was too soon. They weren't ready. There were pieces of the equation which still didn't add up. If she could only have more time, she could make sense of them, and they might stand a better chance of winning this fight. But time had run out.

Hogwarts shook with the force of the Death Eaters' attack. The school's protections had fallen, incapable of withstanding such an onslaught, and the battle had now truly begun. Dark wizards had swarmed the grounds along with more dark creatures than Hermione had ever before seen. Hogwarts' protectors were outnumbered ten to one.

The odds were against them, but Hermione couldn't let herself worry about that. There was only one Horcrux left: the snake. As soon as it was destroyed, surely the odds would turn—they had to. Her job was to make sure that it happened. That was what she had to focus on: keeping herself and the boys on track. It wasn't easy, though, not with the battle raging around them. Every instinct she had told her to stop and fight, to help her classmates and teachers defend their school. She knew that the boys felt the same way—that Harry would give anything for this war to end, that Ron desperately wanted to avenge Fred's death…

She cut off that line of thought before it could draw any more tears from her.

Harry had run out from under the invisibility cloak, chasing after Hagrid who'd been carried off by a swarm of Acromantulas. She had to get him back. He was the only one who could stop this war, and until that happened, no one else could matter.

Ron followed at her heels as she ran through the Entrance Hall, the cloak trailing after him like a sail. The large double doors had been blown off their hinges. Splintered wood littered the floor along with fallen rubble and bodies. Hermione was sure that she recognised some of them, but she couldn't allow herself to check. She couldn't let herself dwell on the fact that those who survived would have to identify the dead and bury them, and then live with the guilt of surviving when so many others had fallen.

Spells flew past her as flashes of bright light. Some were friendly fire—Stunning and Binding Charms at worst—others were the exact opposite, meant to maim, harm and kill. Both sides did not fight as equals, and Hermione knew that her side was at a disadvantage because of its morality. Her allies would not stoop to the level of their enemies, and the latter knew it.

Screams, curses, and explosions filled the air in a cacophony of chaos. Smoke, dust, and ash drifted before her so that only the flashes of light were clearly visible. Deprived of her senses, she ran headlong into the fray awaiting her outside the front doors.

The courtyard was unrecognisable. In a matter of hours, it had been turned into a ruin, but not a deserted one. Fires burned among the debris, shedding light on fighters battling for their lives. Spells flew back and forth, but it was too dark for Hermione to tell who she ought to be helping, and who she ought to be hindering.

A shriek cut through the din, and Hermione caught sight of a wave of darkness rolling through the courtyard toward the Forbidden Forest. All in its path scattered except for a lone boy desperately pursuing it. Hermione locked on to him and ran faster than she ever had before.

The swarm of spiders was quickly fading into the night, but Harry's chase was impeded when a gigantic foot came crashing down in front of him. The ground shuddered upon impact, and Hermione tripped, grazing her hands and knees on the hard stone. Ron was right beside her, helping her up before she could get her bearings, but she pushed him away before he could think to start fussing over her. She didn't have time to worry about her bloodied skin or ripped jeans.

The giant facing Harry must have been at least twenty feet tall, most of its body hidden among the darkness of the night sky. It smashed a fist the size of a car through an upper window, and glass rained down upon Harry, forcing him to retreat into Hermione's and Ron's arms. The giant tried to grab people through the window above, and Hermione had half a mind to stun him if only to clear the path toward the Shrieking Shack where Voldemort and Nagini lay in wait. But before she could, a spell hit her in the shoulder, sending her reeling as pain burst through her.

It felt as though every single one of her nerve endings was on fire, twisting and searing into a withering mass of pain. White-hot knives pierced every inch of her skin, and her consciousness ebbed. Black mists swirled at the edges of her mind, drawing her in, but the spell would not allow her that release. It kept her on the edge—with pain so intense she knew she would surely die—but refused her the mercy of falling.

As suddenly as it had begun, it ended. The pain receded into nothing but a memory, and she was left gasping on the ground, tears staining her face as she tried to push past the fear of ever feeling that pain again.

A body fell to the ground beside her, and she scrambled away. Voldemort's Death Eaters had finally realised that The Boy Who Lived was among them and had surrounded Harry, Ron, and Hermione. The boys were holding them off as best as they could, but they were outnumbered with more masked figures swarming towards them.

This could not be their last stand. No one else knew about Voldemort's Horcruxes. They hadn't told a soul, as per Dumbledore's instructions, and what a mistake that had been. If the three of them died now, Voldemort would win. Hermione would not let that happen, not now, not ever.

She parried spell after spell as her mind raced to come up with a solution. It came to her as a masked Death Eater hit Ron with the Cruciatus Curse. A burst of fury surged through her, and she barely had to lift her wand to send the perpetrator crashing into the castle wall so hard that the stone cracked.

It was a simple solution, one that required neither wand nor incantation, yet, it would be the most difficult task of her life. But she knew what had to be done, and she also knew that failure was not an option.

Her mind made up, she lowered her wand and distantly heard Ron shout for her to fight back, to not give up. There was no time to tell him that she wasn't conceding defeat, that she was doing this to save him and everyone else she cared about. There was no chance to say goodbye. But perhaps that was a good thing—she might not have been able to go through with what needed to be done.

Her only means of defence clattered onto the broken cobblestone, and she was left vulnerable. It was an unpleasant feeling, to say the least, and every instinct she had begged her to pick up her wand and fight until her last breath. But that course of action meant sacrificing her friends along with herself, all for the sake of pride and daring. She had the opportunity to save Harry, Ron, and countless others. She had to take it.

Her legs felt like lead as she stepped forward. She struggled to put one foot in front of the other, as though gravity itself were urging to reconsider. The frantic drumming of her heart drowned out all other sounds, and the adrenaline coursing through her veins played tricks on her vision, making the surrounding battle look like a slow-motion scene from a big-budget movie.

Harry and Ron were so distracted by her apparent bout of madness that they no longer paid sufficient attention to the chaos happening around them. One ambitious Death Eater made the most of that. A flash of green light burst from the tip of his wand, heading straight for Harry's heart. Hermione knew that even if this hadn't been part of the plan, she would have jumped in front of that spell in a heartbeat. It made it easier.

She'd wondered more than once over the course of this war what the Killing Curse felt like. Often over the past year, she'd woken with a start, covered in cold sweat and gasping for breath, from a nightmare during which she was hit with the spell. Her imagination had conjured thoughts of immense pain, similar to the Cruciatus Curse, followed by a sudden end. She was pleased to learn that she'd been mistaken.

The spell struck her in the chest almost painlessly, and she was hit with an indescribable surge of clarity. Images flashed before her eyes—memories from her youngest years and onwards. She saw her parents coddling a newborn baby, then teaching a toddler to walk. The words of the first book she'd read, the one that had made her fall in love with reading, flashed through her mind. Her Hogwarts acceptance letter danced in front of her, dissolving into a bird's-eye view of the school as it had been when she'd first seen it—larger than life, magical beyond belief, but most importantly: whole, with no trace of dark magic or ruin.

As the memories of her time at Hogwarts played out in front of her, she felt peace wash over her. She focussed on remembering her friends, the people she loved, the ones she would die for, and she let that feeling fill her soul, healing every crack and crevice until she felt more like herself than she ever had before. She no longer felt like lead. In fact, she felt as though she weighed nothing at all, as though she were made of light and love and nothing else. It was time.

Lily Potter had cast a similar spell sixteen years ago, but she had done so unwittingly. Even so, the force of her sacrifice had been enough to blast a charred hole through the Potter's cottage and kill the most powerful dark wizard of the age. But Hermione knew what she was doing. She knew the steps to take, the ancient magic to invoke, to give the spell its full effect.

She let the light leak out of her, spilling around her like tendrils of gold. They were part of her. She could control them as she did her own limbs, and she did. She reached out with them, wrapping each bright strand around the heart of one of the brave people who had chosen to risk their life because it was the right thing to do. And in doing so, she became a part of them. Her soul enveloped theirs like a shield with magic so pure and powerful that no one living could ever fully grasp it. Hermione did, though, but she was no longer living.

What felt like a lifetime to her, witnesses saw happen in only a second. The green jet of light of the Killing Curse hit Hermione Granger in the chest, and as she fell to the ground, a strange glow poured out of her. Before anyone could take a closer look or even be sure of what they'd seen, the light disappeared.

An awful cry cut through the air, so heartbreaking that all who heard it immediately lowered their wands. Ron Weasley collapsed beside the girl he loved, cradling her head against his chest as his heart shattered. There was so much that he had wanted to say to her and an entire life he had wanted to live with her. But he would never get the chance. His grief tore at him worse than any wound or curse, and all he wanted was for it to end. He would not raise his wand. He would not defend himself. He would die here with Hermione in his arms and join her in death because he knew for a fact that he could not live without her.

One Death Eater was only too keen to grant him his wish. The man's aim was perfect—Ron knew this despite the fact that his eyes never left Hermione's face—yet, the spell never hit him.

His lament died in his throat as the pain in his heart suddenly stopped. He wondered if this was death, this feeling of lightness and love, which now enveloped him. He would gladly greet it with open arms if it were. But as the feeling wrapped itself around him, it burst outward also, knocking several Death Eaters into walls and piles of debris. They slid to the ground, limp and motionless, as the same thing happened all over Hogwarts. The Death Eaters' own spells turned on them tenfold, and in a single second, the tide of the battle shifted.

Faced with such an unexplainable turn of events, many of Voldemort's followers fled out of fear, while those who remained succumbed to their own magic. The battle was won, and Hogwarts' students and teachers rejoiced.

Ron, however, was too busy staring into Hermione's lifeless eyes to take part in the cheering. He knew what she had done even if he couldn't begin to understand the ins and outs of it. She had saved them. It wasn't that great a surprise—it was what Hermione always did. But by sacrificing herself, she had given him a gift, one he'd felt when that spell had sailed towards him. A part of her now resided within him and everyone else she had given her life to protect. The magic she had used was the polar opposite of a Horcrux, yet there were similarities. A piece of her soul had attached itself to his to keep him safe, and so long as he lived, she would always be with him.

A hand squeezed his shoulder, and he tore his gaze away from Hermione to look up at Harry's tear-stained face. "I'm so sorry."

"Don't be," said Ron as he gently laid Hermione's head on the ground.

He started toward the Entrance Hall where the survivors were gathering without a backward glance at the body he had left behind—the girl he loved wasn't there anymore.

"Come on," he said. "We've still got a job to do."

Harry didn't move. He couldn't bring himself to look away from his fallen friend. "But Hermione…"

"We'll meet her again," said Ron with absolute certainty because he knew they would. In every act of daring and during every death-defying feat, she would be beside them, watching over them, protecting them, and every close call would bring her that much closer.

She wasn't gone, not really.


End file.
